Read Online The Darker Side of Pleasure by Eden Bradley - Free Book Online Page A

and sleep.”
    “I love you, Cam.”
    “I love you, too, honey. You know I do. Now go to sleep. And dream about me, Jillian. Dream about all the things I’m going to do to you when I get home.”
    They hung up.
    Removing the clamps hurt worse than putting them on had, making her suck in a sharp breath, but still she reveled in the pain. It was all too good.
    She went to bed and slept, dreaming about what Cam would do to her with their new toys, about the pleasure he would bring her. About the oddly lovely pain. Just as she had been instructed.
     

     
    Cam’s return home was delayed an extra day. Jillian missed him, but more than that, it gave her too much time to think. While he’d kept her in a state of intense arousal, she’d been able to turn her brain off. But now she was home from work, with nothing to do. She sat in the living room with a glass of white wine in her hand, staring through the tall windows into the night.
    Cam had designed this house himself, and Jillian had always loved it. It was more glass than it was solid walls, letting the outside in. There were fireplaces everywhere: The living-room hearth was two-sided, with the other side opening into the dining room; there was one in the master bedroom, another small one in the master bath.
    The house was sleek modernity at its best, with hardwood floors that warmed up the bold architectural lines. They had decorated together, choosing simple, contemporary furnishings and neutral tones with splashes of bold colors here and there, giving the place a Zen feel.
    It had always felt peaceful to her, serene. But tonight it just felt lonely. Too big. And all that glass made her feel that the world could too easily intrude.
    She leaned into the dozens of Moroccan-inspired throw pillows on the long, L-shaped, tan suede sofa and pulled a handwoven blanket over her. The skylight overhead showed the faint twinkle of stars through the thin sheen of fog in the sky. Seattle was almost always fogged in, often making her wonder why Cam had bothered to build the skylights here, as well as in the dining room and their bedroom. But it was part of his idea of letting everything in, of building with as few boundaries between the inside and the outside as possible.
    Boundaries. She was having some trouble with that tonight. Now that she had a span of time when she wasn’t being stimulated, when her sex drive wasn’t in control, she had some time to think things through. For a while it had been fine just to go along with what was happening. After all, she and Cam were much closer than they’d been in a very long time, and that was good. But she had to stop, finally, and question what they were doing.
    The whole power play thing was pretty intense. Potent. And all-consuming while it was happening. It shut out the outside world just as effectively as Cam’s glass house let it in. But was that really for the best? She had certainly needed a break from all her thinking, from the guilt that ate away at her insides day in and day out. From her whole head trip that had caused such a rift between her and her husband.
    A shard of guilt stabbed through her. She knew it was all her fault. Cam didn’t deserve what he’d had to put up with this last year. She’d been so distant—physically, emotionally, sexually. Even when they’d had sex, she was always at a distance in her head, and she knew he could feel that she wasn’t really there with him.
    The BDSM stuff had certainly changed that. And she was glad for Cam. Glad for herself. But was it really going to fix them? Was it really going to fix her? She wasn’t even sure she was fixable.
    She was learning to trust her body again, the body that had betrayed her so deeply when it had let go of their baby. God, it was all a tangle in her mind. Her body, her grief.
    Her culpability.
    Tears stung at the back of her eyes and she took a big sip of her wine to ease the constriction in her throat.
    No, too much to think about now.
    But